C O N T E N T S

Welcome to Wanderlust
Don George, Editor

On the Amazon: Snapshots of a Green Planet
By Isabel Allende
- Isabel Allende booklist
- Books on the Amazon
- Getting there

Two Sides of the Rhine
By Jan Morris
- Jan Morris booklist
- Getting there

My Best Holiday Experience
By Pico Iyer
- Pico Iyer booklist

The Dangers of
Provence
By Peter Mayle
- Peter Mayle booklist
- Books on Provence
- Getting there

Fade into Blue
By Amanda Jones

D E P A R T M E N T S

Passages
"Pass the Butterworms"
Tim Cahill
- An interview with
Tim Cahill

Postmark: Paris
David Downie

Table Talk
- Romancing the Road
- Readers Tips

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Life on the Water

another day we went to a native village that was in fact the habitat of a single extended family. These were Sateré Maué Indians who had been evicted from their lands and forced to emigrate to the city, where they ended up in a favela, or slum, dying of hunger. The owner of the Ariaú Hotel had given them some land where they could return to living in harmony with their traditions. We arrived at their village late one afternoon by boat, at the hour of the mosquitoes.

We climbed a muddy hill to the clearing in the forest where, beneath a single palm roof, a bonfire blazed and a few hammocks were strung. One of the Indians spoke a little Portuguese, and he explained that they had planted manioc and soon they would have the necessary tools to process it. From the root they make flour, tapioca and bread -- even a liquor.

I walked over to the fire to see what was cooking, and found an alligator about a meter in length, quartered like a chicken, with claws, teeth, eyes and hide intact, sadly roasting. Two piranhas were on a hook, along with something that resembled a muskrat. Later, after I got a good look at the skin, I saw it was a porcupine. I tried everything: The alligator tasted like dried and reconstituted codfish, the piranhas like smoke, and the porcupine like petrified pig. The Indians were selling the modest crafts they make from seeds, sticks and feathers -- and a long, badly cured boa skin, brittle and pathetic.

The caboclos are Indians with European or African blood, a mixing of races that began during the 16th century. Some are so poor they don't use money; they live from fishing and a few crops, trading for fuel, coffee, sugar, flour, matches and other indispensable supplies. There are a few villages on land, but as the water rises more than 45 feet during the annual floods, submerging thousands of acres, people prefer to build houses on stilts or live in floating huts.

The dwellings are not divided into rooms, as the caboclos do not share the white man's urge for privacy. They have few possessions, barely what is needed for survival. The incentive of acquisition is unknown; people fish or hunt for the day's needs, because anything more than that spoils. Sometimes, if they catch more than their daily quota, they keep the live fish in bamboo baskets in the water. They cannot understand the white man's greed or his drive to get everywhere quickly.

All communication and transportation is by river. News can take weeks to travel by word of mouth to the nearest radio, where it awaits its turn to be transmitted in the form of a telegram. As a result, the death of a family member may be learned a year after the fact, and a birth when the child is already walking. For the caboclos, time is measured in days by boat; life, in rainy seasons. What sense is there in rushing? Life, like the river, goes nowhere. The whole point is to keep afloat, paddling through an unchanging landscape.

Connections

A few months ago on the Alto Yavarí river, on the border between Peru and Brazil, explorers discovered a tribe that had never had any contact with white civilization. To record that first encounter airplanes and helicopters laden with television cameras filled the air, while on the ground the Indians, surprised in the midst of the Stone Age, readied their arrows.

I admit with a touch of embarrassment that I bought a blowgun, arrows and a pouch of powerful poison curare that came directly from that tribe. The blowgun is nearly 10 feet long and I was not allowed to take it on the plane, but I hope that someday it will arrive in the mail. The arrows and curare are on my desk as I write, but I need to find a safer place for them. It would be difficult to explain if someone pricked a finger on a curare-poisoned arrow.

In comic contrast, Avon Ladies have invaded the Amazon, women who go from door to door selling beauty products. I learned that one had recently been eaten by piranhas -- a direct contradiction to the soothing words of the guide when he invited us to swim in the Rio Negro.

The Negro is as smooth as a dark mirror when it is calm, frightening when storms erupt. In a glass, the water is a kind of amber color, like strong tea. It has a delicate, almost sweet flavor. One day we left before dawn to see the sun rising on a red horizon and to watch the frolicking of rosy dolphins. Dolphins are among the few fish that are not eaten; the flesh tastes terrible and the skin is unusable. The Indians, nonetheless, still harpoon them to rip out their eyes and genitals to make amulets for virility and fertility. In that same river where the water is as warm as soup and the dolphins frolic, where the previous afternoon we had watched some German tourists catch dozens of piranhas with a pole, a string and a bare hook, I had swum naked.

That night we went out in a canoe with a huge, battery-powered spotlight to look at the alligators. The light blinded the fish, and in their terror some leaped into the boat. We saw bats and huge butterflies flying in the darkness. The boatman, an adolescent caboclo who spoke a little English and laughed openly at our discomfort, would beam his light into the tree roots and when he spotted a pair of red eyes would jump into the water. We would hear a great thrashing and soon he would reemerge holding an alligator by the neck in his bare hand if it was small, with a cord around its muzzle if it was larger. We saw photographs of one they had caught the week before: It was longer than the boat. There are also more than 30 species of manta rays in those same waters, all very dangerous. And to think I had swum there!

After 10 days, we had -- reluctantly -- to leave. I did not find the four naked Indians with their magic box, but when I returned home, I carried some bit of that vast greenness within me, like a treasure. For the sake of discipline, and because of superstition, I begin all my books on Jan. 8. On Jan. 8, 1997, I finally ended the three-year block I had suffered and was able to write again. My dream of the jungle was not without its reward.
March 25, 1997

Have you ever been to the Amazon? Would you like to go there? Join the discussion in the new Travel section of Table Talk.

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